


Death of the Author

by futurelounging



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: AU, F/M, a wee bit trippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-24 12:20:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16639982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futurelounging/pseuds/futurelounging
Summary: A playwright and a director work to produce his play and explore their relationship in the meantime.This play includes scenes from The Fiery Cross.





	1. Act 1

[A light illuminates a narrator, an older man with a scraggly beard and a gruff demeanor.]

**Narrator [STAGE LEFT]:** This is the story of a man’s death. [He pauses, brow furrowed.] No. This is the story of a man’s life, which, of course, includes his death. Most of the time, death comes at the end of a life. In his case, death came in the middle.

[1771, Interior of a cabin in North Carolina. The hearth glows in the dim receding light of early evening. Drying herbs hang from the walls. An old woman is standing at the table chopping root vegetables while a young woman sits nursing an infant. The nursing woman draws her child on a piece of paper while she nurses. Another woman enters from a back room, brushing her hands off on her skirts. She sits next to the nursing woman, her daughter.]

**Claire:** [looking at the drawing] Oh, that is very nice. You’ve perfectly captured his dimple and that mischievous glint in his eye.

**Brianna:** [shyly smiling at the compliment] You think? I wish I could capture just how sticky he is. His perpetual grubbiness just doesn’t come through on paper.

**Claire:** [taking the baby from her daughter as she pulls her dress back up. Claire sets the baby on her shoulder and rubs his back gently] Adorably grubby. You’re far too real to render on paper, aren’t you Jemmy?

[The front door opens suddenly and somewhat violently, caught by the wind. Roger braces himself against the door frame, holding his hat to his head and knocking the dirt off his boots on the porch before stepping inside. The wind gusts and blows the drawing off the table and it lands near the fire.]

[Claire and Brianna yell in unison]

**Claire and Brianna:** The door!

[Roger quickly jerks the door closed, sealing out the wind and smiles apologetically.]

 

“Stop! Hold up.”

The director runs up the stage stairs as the narrator sticks his head around the cabin wall. “A voice from beyond our dimension booms through the tiny room, freezing the inhabitants in terror.” He snickers and slinks away backstage.

At the back of the theater, the playwright stretches in his seat and runs his hand through his hair, his joints popping and cracking. The director’s voice is lost in the theater, swallowed by stage curtains and set pieces and the murmurs of cast members anxious to be done for the day. He strains to hear and wonders why he sat so far away from her.

The director turns back to the seats after conferring with the actors and her eyes meet the playwright's. She is bathed in shadow, but he sees the stagelight haloing her red hair, the shifting of her mouth, the subtle twitch dimpling her cheek.

He imagines she is remembering how she laughed at his frustration one night as his glasses gathered droplets of mist while they walked, soles shuffling over slick cobblestones. Her hand squeezing his arm when she lost her footing, a small yelp escaping her throat as he steadied her.

“Are ye okay? Should I get a car for ye? Or would ye rather climb on my back?”

“You’d do that? Carry me on your back?”

“God, no. We’d both end up wi’ our skulls cracked.”

Maybe that’s the memory. Maybe she’s imagining climbing on his back and how perhaps he’d tell her to hold on to his shoulders, how she’d bury her face in his hair and laugh in his ear when he stumbled up the stairs, how his hands would tuck under her thighs as she slipped lower on his back.

No, she would not have played that scenario out. Her mind doesn’t dally in fantasy the way his does. She deconstructs fantasy. Sets the pieces on a stage and waves her hand at them, reassembling them as she sees fit. As the audience would want it. His sharp and salty words stewed into a new palatable concoction, her own essence infused. It’s intoxicating and luxurious in small bites. Only later does he notice his tongue is burned.

He rises from his seat and winces as it swings up, thumping loudly against the backrest. She’s turned away, back in her role, yelling for the actors to begin again. She is unconcerned by his presence or lack thereof, he thinks.

In the purple glow of dusk, he runs his fingers over frets and strings, staring at his own reflection in the tall windows of his flat. She’s staring back, her red hair flickering like flames, the ghost of her he keeps in his mind’s eye. He loses his rhythm when she looks at him this way, unblinking. A breath and start again, fingers dancing, hopping like spiders.

_You can take the road that takes you to the stars now_

_I can take a road that’ll see me through_

His lips curve. She smiles back.

* * *

 

 

[People are gathered around a large fire, relaxed, familiar conversation murmurs through the crowd. Off to the side are the Frasers.]

**Claire:** [elbowing Jamie in the ribs] Can you at least try to look happy? It’s a perfectly respectable Christian marriage.

**Narrator:** Respectable is used somewhat loosely in this situation.

**Jamie:** [face contorts to a cartoonish variation of pride and elation]

**Claire:** [sarcastically] Wonderful.

[Roger and Bree stand before the reverend, waiting to begin their wedding vows. A small boy, Germain, tugs at Claire’s skirts.]

**Germain:** Who that, _Grand-mère_?

**Claire:** That’s the minister. Your aunt and uncle are getting married.

**Germain:** Is a minister like a priest?

**Claire:** Yes, but we Catholics have priests and your Uncle, he’s Presbyterian and…

**Jamie:** [interrupting] That’s a heretic.

**Claire:** It is _not_ a heretic, darling…

**Germain:** [interrupting] Why _Grand-père_ is making faces?

**Jamie:** We’re verra happy.

**Germain:** Oh! [Germain imitates Jamie’s fake-happy face]

[Lights dim so only the glow of the fire illuminates Bree and Roger.]

**Minister:** Dearly beloved...

**Narrator:** They spoke their vows with sincerity, their voices thick with emotion. Weddings are like that, catching us unawares with the power of the moment. But it was not the words he repeated to her that caught in his throat. It was the knowledge that they’d made and spoken their own vows long before this moment.

* * *

 

 

“Really play this moment with the weight of what you’ve both been through. This isn’t perfunctory. You are handfast, and that was meaningful, undoubtedly, but now, with your family, with your child and hope for your future, this is when it really hits you, how far you’ve come to get here. I want to hear it in your voices. Don’t break down, but just let the emotions infuse the words. Give the words space.”

The actors are nodding with her words, faces alert and earnest, and she adores them for it. Her Roger and Bree are forever bent over their scripts in deep conversation, brows creased. She loves her cast, their familial ribbing, the looks and shorthand, the arms draped on shoulders when the lights dim. She has wondered more than once if her own mother and father’s absence spurs her to seek these surrogate families of the theater. If only the lonely ones darken stage doors.

He’d asked her about them once, thinking they perhaps were dead like his own.

“No, not dead. It’s quite a story, really. I don’t know exactly why they parted all those years ago, what their argument was about, but she left and found out she was pregnant with me and when she tried to find him, he was gone. Didn’t want to be found, I guess. And she moved on. Married Frank, who I knew as my father up until a few years ago.”

“She told you after Frank died?”

She’d smiled at him, swallowing bittersweet memories. “Twenty-year-olds are not terribly nuanced in their assessment of things. I didn’t believe her at first. Then I hated her for lying to me. Then I began to understand.”

The playwright, he, too, is a lonely one. He’s gone. She hasn’t turned to look. Doesn’t need to, as she heard his seat swing up a little while ago. Heard the door click closed behind him. Twice now this week he’s walked out before the end. She imagines he thinks he is no longer needed. He doesn’t realize how his presence keeps her focused on the heart of the story. The way he nervously rubs his beard when he’s concerned about how a line is spoken. She makes a mental note to tell him to sit next to her next time.

She wraps her scarf around her neck when the biting wind attacks as she steps down from the stage door to the pavement. She walks silently beside the actors who are giddy with energy, the bottled-up spark that grew through the week of rehearsals. They duck into a pub and she waves them off, curling into herself, now exposed with no other bodies to divert the wind. She can hear him in a corner of her mind chastising her for not wearing a hat.

“The heat escapes from your head.”

“I think your heat escapes from your mouth.”

He’d frozen, mouth agape at her wicked barb.

“You’re losing vast amounts of heat right now.”

He’d grasped her face in his hands, his fingers warm from being stuffed deep in his pockets. “Replenish my heat then.” He’d kissed her before her lips could form an answering smile, before she could think to free her hands from her pockets and pull him closer. She’d forgotten how to move, how to breathe, how to do anything but melt into him.

His light is on, the corner lamp in his living room with the crooked shade. She sees his shadow move across the bookshelf. He’s pouring a drink, she thinks. She ducks under the awning, her finger reaching for the buzzer without looking. The distinct smell of his flat appears like a phantom, released by memories gathered over the last year.

“Can I come up?”

An answering buzz and she’s looking at him moments later, their faces shadowed by the burned out hallway light. His face is a mix of drunk, relieved, elated, sorrowful. He doesn’t move to her, but she finds herself suddenly before him, almost close enough to feel his breath on her cheek.

“I miss you.”

His eyes fall to her wrist and he tells himself he’s not looking to see if she’s wearing the bracelet. As if she should be obligated to wear his gift at all times to prove something. As if it means something to her. “Ye see me nearly every day.”

“I miss you.” The words float to him in whispers, too quiet to be conversation. They are cloaked in intimacy, and shivering vulnerability, sent naked across a plain.

Her fingers traced the cracks in the leather of his sofa, worn edges where his thighs have rubbed as he rocked back and forth, his guitar propped on his leg. Singing ballads to his books. He sits next to her, handing her a glass of whisky over ice. She’d tried to like it neat for his sake, one of the many tiny ways in which the shape of her world had been warped by his presence, bending and stretching the edges.

“They’re coming to town next week. My mother. And Da.” She smiles saying it still, the wonder of having him still delighting her. The soft sound of _Da_ dropping from her tongue. His presence in no danger of infringing on the solid truth of who her father had been. He’d appeared in her life like a bookshelf suddenly swinging open to reveal a hidden room. Another part of her world reshaped.

“What’ll ye do while they’re visiting?” He kept his voice steady, a friendly question between friends.

Her eyes fix on him and he imagines a frown forming on her face, though, if pressed, she would only admit to being serious, not angry. He will always accuse her of being upset when she’s serious. She will always argue against it. “I want you to meet them.”

He stares ahead, pretending to read the spines of books, probing them for answers. “Why?” She hates being cornered and he gets a small thrill from knowing how much she dreads this question. He instantly hates himself for relishing it.

“It’s what I want.”

Her voice is too quiet and too meek for there to be truth in it. He knows this of her. That truth comes out like a drum, a pounding certainty reverberating off every surface when she speaks it. “Want to introduce them to the playwright ye’ve been working with, then? Sounds lovely.” He can feel the storm crackling between the coldness of his words and the heat of her ire.

“You want to punish me for it?” She stares at his clenched jaw, hating him for looking away. “For not being the woman you’d hoped for.”

He turns to her now, looking as if she’d foretold his own death. “No. God, no. I… Punish you? No. I wasna _hoping_ for anyone. It’s nothing to do wi’ hope.” He’s shaking with confusion at her words. With wishing he could take everything back and start again. Silence wrestles with their breathing. “It’s just you. It’s just that I want you.” The last word is little more than a whisper swallowed by sorrow. He is mourning her.

She holds her hands between her knees, a tremor running through her body as she swallows her tears. “I miss you.”

He realizes now what her words mean. It is an admission. A door swung wide. That he should not leave her stranded should she falter. That his words were not merely words but promises sifted through the history of her parents’ marriage, where words were weapons more often than not. That him disappearing from her right when she stumbled in her feelings was the loss she expected and feared the most. He was mourning her while she searched for him. Both of them fools.

He turns to her now, his hand no steadier than hers. Her skin is warm, impossibly soft under his fingertips. “I miss you, too.”

“Will you sing for me?”

He laughs lightly and pretends he’s not screaming at himself to not kiss her just yet. “Aye. I always sing for you.”

* * *

 

 

[Night. A large bonfire burns and people stand just in the shadows. Jamie approaches the fire. He lifts a cup, and all others around the fire lift theirs.]

**Jamie:** Slàinte!

**The Crowd:** Slàinte!

**Jamie:** To old friends, and new. And to our women, for they are our strength.

[Jamie throws his cup to the fire and holds his hand out to Claire.]

**Jamie:** Come to me, Claire, daughter of Henry, strength of my heart.

[Jamie holds his hand out to Roger.]

**Jamie:** Stand by my hand, Roger the singer, son of Jeremiah MacKenzie.

[Roger, stunned and shaking with emotion, stands and moves to Jamie’s side.]

**Jamie:** Stand by me in battle. Be a shield for my family - and for yours, son of my house.

[Curtain closes.]

 

**End - Act I**


	2. Act 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW  
> The director stays the night at the playwright's flat and they reconnect in the morning. She struggles with the lasting effects of trauma. In the play, Roger and Bree continue to make strides in their relationship until Roger is taken by Buck and handed over to Governor Tryon.

[Roger and Brianna walk through the woods, Roger carrying a rifle.]

 **Roger:** He’ll be fine, hen. Your mother will take good care of him.

 **Brianna:** Hmmm, spoil him more like. But you’re right. I just…

 **Roger:** Hm?

 **Brianna:** I’ve not left him for very long before.

[Roger grunts in such a way that indicates he feels it’s long past the time she should have left their son and Brianna shoots him a warning look.]

[Brianna stops him with a hand on his arm as a faint cry reaches their ears.]

 **Roger:** Do ye want to go back?

 **Brianna:** [She hesitates, then answers.] No. Perhaps we should get farther away from the house. So they don’t hear us. [Roger raises a teasing brow.] The shooting, that is.

 **Roger:** [grinning] Oh aye, the shooting.

[Roger begins walking again and she grabs his arm, pulling him to her, kissing him soundly. He reciprocates, and they stand, foreheads touching, dazed.]

 **Brianna:** [Smiling] Let’s go.

[They walk through the forest and Brianna stops suddenly, raises the rifle and shoots a squirrel.]

 **Roger:** Well done! We’ll not fall to any squirrels - not with your aim.

 **Brianna:** Provider and protector, at your service.

[They sit on the ground while Brianna skins the squirrel. Roger is quiet, distracted.]

 **Brianna:** Roger, what is it?

[He is still, deep in thought, but his face ripples with emotion.]

 **Roger:** Ah weel, I never told ye and I just... I killed a man when I was with the Mohawk.

[Brianna is taken aback but says nothing.]

 **Roger:** I hadn’t realized it happened. It wasna intentional. I didna even know him. It was just chaos, I…

[She grasps his hand, wrapping it between her own, and kisses his knuckles.]

 **Brianna:** Do you think of it often?

 **Roger:** Almost never. Is that terrible?

 **Brianna:** No. You are not terrible. That I know.

[She leans toward him, capturing his lips with her own and, mid-kiss, he rolls them both to the ground, they begin removing clothing until they are a tangle of limbs, writhing on the forest floor.]

* * *

  


He stretches, half asleep, and his hand collides with something hard that thuds as it hits the ground, jolting him fully awake. The whisky glass lands on the carpet, a remaining droplet slithering along the inside contemplating escape. The light is blue, dawn still rubbing sleep from its eyes.

His tongue feels thick and he rolls clumsily to the floor, pushing himself to his feet unsteadily. A bit hungover, a bit tired. His feet shuffle over the hardwood to the kitchen tile and he gulps down two glasses of water until his throat cools, and with the hydration comes a clarity. His mind slowly focusing. He rewinds his steps to something that had caught his eye before he walked into the kitchen. In the hallway, just inside the entryway. Her shoes.

A surge of hope, elation, a sense of victory he’s slightly ashamed to feel. She’s still here. He is walking before he realizes it, avoiding the creakiest parts of the floor, until he is shadowing his bedroom’s doorway.

The thoughts come unbidden, waves swallowing sand.

_Stay there. Stay there forever. Keep that pillow so I can always see your hair spilling over it. Keep my shirt you borrowed and wear it until it’s threadbare and frayed. Keep that side of the bed as your own so you know how far to reach for your glass of water in the middle of the night._

“Hey.” Her voice is scratchy, rough from disuse and dehydration. She pushes her hair from her eyes and smiles at him in such a way that every inch of her face is curved up. An open and unconscious smile, not a reward or politeness. Inevitable as a drawn breath.

He leans against the door jamb and attempts to look casual, as if he is waiting for her to wake so he can ask what she’d like for breakfast. As if this is their routine. “I dinna recall falling asleep last night.” He ducks his head shyly, hoping he hadn’t embarrassed himself.

She pushes herself up on one elbow, her hand propping up her head. The neck of his t-shirt is worn and stretched, and it hangs low on her chest. His eyes flick to the slope of her clavicle. He tries and fails to stop himself from imagining her breasts, unencumbered beneath the grey cotton.

“I can’t say that I remember you falling asleep either. I went to the bathroom and when I came back you were drooling on the couch cushion.”

He barks a laugh at her teasing, slightly afraid to contemplate that she might not be joking. “I hope ye cleaned me up.”

“Shoved a towel under your cheek and called it a night.”

He is so lost in her that he doesn’t realize she’s flirting with him. He is perpetually unaware, yet forever enchanted. “I’m going to take a quick shower, if ye dinna mind.” He is telling her he wants her to stay, expects her to, and wonders why he can’t just ask.

She yawns in response, falling back against the pillows and he lets out a small breath of relief. She’ll stay for now.

Her limbs are lifeless, weighed down by all the things she carries with her. The weight of her worries that she’ll not live up to her father’s expectations. Though he isn’t here to judge and would undoubtedly champion her, she has carved decrees into the halls of her mind that she will be something great for him. By the end of the coming year she will learn to only be great for herself and no one else.

The grooves of her skin are filled with the weight of her decisions. To walk away from him when he cast himself before her. To wear her sleeves long to hide the bruising on her wrists after a date with another man that left her shaking in front of her mirror the next morning. To not tell him what had happened to her. To hold the words on the tip of her tongue and swallow them over and over instead of letting them spill at his feet. To not tell him for fear, not that he’d no longer want her, but that he’d want her but always look at her pityingly. That the desire shading his eyes minutes ago would fade behind tentative touches and whispered worried queries.

The weight becomes unbearable and she throws the comforter aside, swinging her legs to the floor and tensing the muscles in her body, taking inventory of each. He’s humming in the shower and she drifts past the bathroom door, down the hall to the kitchen. She refills his glass and downs it, then splashes water on her face, pressing the pads of her thumbs into the corners of her eyes to loosen the sleep.

She takes a deep breath that lifts his t-shirt, brushing the bottom against her thighs and she’s suddenly aware of how little clothing she is wearing. The shower has stopped. Her toes crack as she walks light on her feet toward the hall.

Before she can reach the bedroom, he steps out of the bathroom, clad only in a white towel wrapped around his waist. Her feet stop mid-step, her body unable to continue as her senses zero in on him. A bead of water tracks down his back, and he slowly turns to face her.

Her mind is a jumble of thoughts. It records each water droplet. On his ear lobe, his neck, in the dark hair forming a line down his stomach. His skin is tight against his frame, sleek lines and muscles taut under her gaze.

When her eyes finally make their way to his face, she loses her breath for a moment. A flush moves through her, starting in her core, a wave of heat triggering the pounding of her heart. His eyes fall there, just where the hem of his shirt tickles the tops of her thighs, as if he can see the heat flooding through her.

Her fingers grasp the bottom of the shirt, holding it to steady herself, but she imagines he thinks she means to lift it. She imagines he is flooding with heat as well. The thought of it, of his blood rushing - of the surge of strength and desire as he hardens - sends another rush through her, and she is no longer wading in but is fully submerged. She is clenching and forgetting to breathe, and she is certain one touch from him will shatter her. When her eyes meet his, she realizes he knows this.

Before she can move, he is before her, his chest heaving as he crushes her to him, their lips colliding in a breathless, desperate clawing for supremacy. His skin is still hot from the water and she feels herself burning up. Her fingers skid clumsily over his back and sides and she hooks her fingers under the towel, digging into his hips.

It begins to fall, but is stuck between them, caught on his cock pressing through the towel against her. She imagines yanking it away and dropping before him, taking him in her mouth and working him until he screams, but instead she finds herself gasping into his neck as his hands find her breasts under the shirt, pinching and kneading until she is quivering and mindless of her plans.

“I want you.” She hadn’t understood that he needed to hear it, that her actions were not enough.

But her words unleash something in him and he throws the towel to the floor in one motion and yanks her shirt off in another, his fingers instantly pressing against the elastic of her underwear until they too drop to the floor.

She is dizzy with desire and feels as though she might fall until he turns her, pressing her back to him and his fingers sink into her, dragging slowly between her folds and circling. He begins a slow pattern as she jerks and gasps, incoherent sounds escaping her lips.

“How does this feel?”

Don’t say “good,” she thinks. It is so much more than _good_. It is the effervescent pulsing of bodies drawn by the urgent needs of flesh. And it is him. His fingers drawing this from her with love’s intention.

“Good.” She doesn’t even realize she’s said it, because his fingers are now pressing inward, deeper until she is shaking and grinding back against his cock, the head shimmering with pre-cum as she rides his hand.

He is speaking but she can’t grasp it, her head buzzing. Her name. She hears her name, but all is lost again as his palm presses against her clit and she grasps his hand, stilling it, tearing at his skin as she falls apart. She swallows her sounds as her orgasm overtakes her, holds them back from him as if he would lay claim to them.

She leans back limply against his chest, her body thrumming. He presses kisses to her shoulder and laces his fingers between hers, leading her back to the bedroom. As he reaches into the drawer of the bedside table, she presses herself against his back, breathing in a faint bit of sweat and something else, something raw in him, that scent of his body straining toward her.

She reaches around and helps him roll the condom on, her grip causing a shudder to ripple through him. He pulses in her hand and she feels herself arching into him again. They are moving now, a shuffling, a frenzy, a toppling of limbs and hips colliding. A groan escapes his mouth as he slides through her wetness, holding himself back until her fingers press against his backside, making her impatience known.

He pulls back and angles himself, slowly pressing in, both of them hissing and humming and urging the other on. But he is too slow. Too gentle. And his face too close. She feels herself slipping, the doubt and nameless void in her creeping into her vision. Her teeth clamp on his collarbone and slide over his neck until she gasps in his ear, “ _more_.”

“More!”

Her legs move higher, his hips pounding, and he tries to raise on his arms to see her face, but she pulls him down, pressing him to her neck. Holding him there. Her eyes are closed and she leaps, waiting for him to follow her over.

When she leaves, he hovers in the doorway, trying to find a way to make her stay.

“I can make lunch for us.”

“I have to prepare for this afternoon’s rehearsal. I’m meeting with tech. Two days until opening night. God, it’s gone so fast, hasn’t it?”

“Aye, fast.”

“They’ll love it, you know. It’s a beautiful story.”

She forgets to tell him to sit next to her.

He stands at the window, watching her cross the street, and feels suddenly heavy, as if his body is covered in water-logged blankets. He should be beaming, smiling into his tea and laughing at his foolish face, but instead he sees her, in his mind’s eye, below him, eyes screwed shut, pulling at his neck until he collapses against her. She is trying, but she’s fighting some tide unbeknownst to him.

He does not go to the rehearsal but walks through the night market teeming with people and stares at their alien faces, unable to imagine them loving his beautiful story as she promised they would. How could they love it when they do not know what it is to love and die and live again? He panics, suddenly terrified of what is to come, what these people will hear in the words of his story.

* * *

  


 

[Roger leaves the buzzing hive of rebellion leaders and basks in the satisfaction of successfully quelling their urge to attack. He emerges from the woods at a river bank and sees a familiar face, one he’d not expected to see again.]

 **Roger:** Morag?

 **Morag:** Mr. MacKenzie.

 **Roger:** I’d not thought to… Are ye well? Your son?

 **Morag:** We are. As is my husband.

[He does not react to her obvious attempt to warn him away.]

 **Roger:** Please, promise me, should anything happen, ye’ll come to me and I’ll take care of you.

[Roger grasps her arm, lost in his surprise at seeing her, knowing she lived, and without thinking, leans in and kisses her, quickly and chastely. When he pulls away, he sees her husband behind her.]

 **Buck:** Get away from my wife!

 **Roger:** My apologies. I didna mean…

 **Morag:** This is the man who helped us on the ship, he saved Jemmy and I.

 **Buck:** Oh aye, that was you?

 **Roger:** Yes, I just was inquiring about their health and -

 **Buck:** Go now, Morag. I’ll deal with him.

 **Morag:** He wasn’t -

[Buck clenches his fist and moves toward her, threatening violence. Roger swings at Buck first, hitting him in the jaw and a fight ensues.]

[Lights come up on a scaffold. Roger stands at the base, bloodied and bruised, his hands tied in front, a rag tied against his mouth, so he is unable to speak. He is held by Buck, disguised as a militia member, and stands before Governor Tryon.]

 **Governor Tryon:** You saw him in the battle? He was with the Regulators?

 **Buck:** Yes, I did, sir. He killed a man in my company.

 **Governor Tryon:** Take him too, then.

[Roger grunts into the rag, but no words are formed. His desperate pleas go unrecognized.]

[He is led up the scaffold, the noose tightened around his neck.]

[A light comes up on Brianna, sitting outside a tent where soldiers are being tended to. Her eyes are nervous, scanning the field.]

 **Brianna:** Where are you, Roger?

[The floor opens below his feet and he drops, legs kicking wildly, fingers pulling at the rope squeezing his neck. Finally, his legs stop moving.]

* * *


	3. Act 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The play debuts and the director goes on tour with the production while the playwright undergoes a transformation before they reunite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this strange little story - I'd never really written Roger and Bree before and I've found I really like writing them. Thank you for reading!

The playwright lets the blackness envelope him. It fills in the anxious spaces between his breaths and mutes the buzz and chatter around him. He is trying and failing not to sweat through his shirt. A hand on his shoulder forces his eyes open and he cranes his neck back.

“Pardon. I dropped my playbill and I think it slid below your seat. Would you mind?”

He bends down, fingers blindly splayed over the concrete until they snag the edge of the paper. He hands it back to her and brushes the hair from his eyes. Inside him is a war of ego. He wants to tell her he wrote it. _I am here!_ His pride is stomping petulantly, and his father’s sermons sternly chastise him.

The woman sits back in her seat and he imagines her opening the playbill and skimming over his name to reach the headshots of the actors, their airbrushed radiance making her feel closer to the sun.

He lets the darkness consume him again and feels it grow heavier, the house lights fallen, the intermission at an end. The murmurs rise for a moment then fall to silence. Before he opens his eyes, he imagines her backstage. Her hair in a low braid down her back, adjusting her headset, smiling at the stage manager, a giddy twinkle in her eye. She is vibrating, alive.

His eyes open and he is alone. The light on the stage grows brighter and the narrator stops in its center.

 

**Narrator:** Has God predestined this man to hang? To have his windpipe slowly crushed as if his life had only been leading to this moment, to be an example to the rebels? If it was all part of a grand scheme, one immune to the machinations of man, or woman as it were, then here, now, Roger will wake under the healing hands of his wife’s mother and know God’s will shall triumph over his own. And in that knowledge, he will become who he was meant to be.

[Roger is lying on a bed, surrounded by Brianna, Claire, and Jamie. His eyes open and he struggles, still caught in the nightmare of his hanging.]

**Brianna:** Shhh. It’s okay.

**Jamie:** You are alive. You are whole. All is well.

 

When the audience rises, their applause interrupted by whoops, he feels a soul-deep elation. In his mind, he is swinging her in his arms. This story born anew with both their DNA. And with it, they are whole.

The sea of people surges and halt, inching toward the door to burst out into the night. He feels his phone buzz in his pocket and knows it is her telling him to meet her with the rest of the crew afterward to celebrate. He gnaws on his lip, hiding his delirious smile. His mind is already steps ahead, imagining his hand on her hip as they clink their glasses together.

When he arrives at the bar, he finds the cast huddled in a room on the second floor. Their energy electrifies the air and he feels a nervous twinge in his gut, walking into something that exists outside of him, inserting himself into a reverie he cannot understand.

For him, the joy has been a slow, steady drip. Finishing the play, feeling the relief and pride of it. Selling it for production and losing his mind with hopeful expectations. Meeting the director and feeling like the earth has opened up below his feet. The drip no longer startles him but has become white noise in his life. Which is not to say he isn’t appreciative, but now, seeing these shiny faces bursting through their skins, he is envious of their moment.

She sees him before he sees her. Her face the only thing in focus. She touches the arm of the script director, speaks in her ear, her eyes never leaving his. When she walks to him, he feels the nervous twinge in his gut again. He doesn’t know why.

He presses his lips to her temple and breathes her in, not hiding what he is doing from her or anyone else. Her hands pull him tightly to her and it feels like two pieces clicking together.

She turns, her arm still around his back and yells. “Hey! This way!” Their chatter quiets after a minute. “Let’s give this guy a hand for we would not be here tonight if not for his amazing writing.”

It is in this moment, as he receives the smiles and applause from the crew and actors that he begins to feel the joy recede. What he has done, the entire last year of his life devoted to writing this, is a solitary line in a production pamphlet. They do not see him. They see their own futures. They see this play listed next to their names in their next Playbill.

A thread has begun to unravel in him, but he does not see it yet. He leaves an hour later, his ears buzzing. She kisses him sloppily and mouths “call me” but he doesn’t know what that means.

He looks at his phone six times the next day and nearly calls her three of those times. She calls him three days later, her voice clear and cheery.

“Have you looked at the reviews? Why am I asking? Of course you haven’t.”

He can hear the smile in her words. “And why are ye so sure I haven’t?”

“Because you are terrible with criticism.”

He barks out an astonished laugh. “ _I_ am?! And you aren’t?”

“It takes one to know one, you see.”

“Aye, well that is the truth of it.” He takes a moment to hear her breathe in his ear. “What horrible things have they said then? Out wi’ it.”

She begins to read snippets to him. _Melodramatic catharsis. Earnest truth-telling. Ambitious in its emotional scale. Deftly executed by the actors._ She mumbles through bits and he knows she is hiding things from him. From herself as well.

As she reads the reviews to him her own voice begins to dissolve, the words losing their meaning.

“That’s wonderful,” he says, only because he must.

“We are more than this, you know. You wrote this play and labored for the truth of it without ever knowing if it would find its way into a theater. Whatever anyone says, you still own the words.”

“Do ye truly believe that? Whatever this story is to me, the truth of it is intangible. The moment someone reads it and imagines it, it’s gone. It belonged to _you_ the moment ye read it. And the moment an actor spoke a line, that line belonged to _them_. None of it is mine now. There’s a memory of it, but I am only a ghost.” The words rushed out of him and he let them go.

She is silent, making him stew in his words long enough to regret them. “They like it. And they should. It’s good. We’ve done something good here. You may see loss, but I see transformation.”

Her voice cracks on the final word and his fingers curl into a fist, wishing he could lay himself low for being so careless and selfish. He is too many things at once and instead of letting the joy stretch its wings, he smothers it.

He feels her reaching for a goodbye and speaks before he knows what he’ll say. “You... You do know I think ye’ve done something incredible with this production. I’m sorry I didna say it enough all this time.”

“Thank y-”

“-You’re wonderful,” he interrupts, chastising himself for talking over her.

She laughs lightly, and he imagines she’s chewing her lip, smiling. “Mutual appreciation society, then. I’ll take it.”

They leave the conversation on that note, smiling into their phones, certain of nothing.

The show goes on and she disappears into the theater. He finds her once every couple of weeks and they eat off each other’s plates while she regales him with tales of audience antics and actors who got the hiccups in the middle of a scene and her phone lights up endlessly. He follows her home and she undresses before he’s closed the door behind him. He wants to worship her, but she reads his slowness as timidity and straddles him with little preamble.

 

 

[Lights come up on the dining table of the Fraser home. Jamie, Claire, Brianna, Jem, and Roger are all present.]

**Brianna:** Willie bought this? [She turns the astrolabe around in her hand, examining it.]

**Jamie:** Aye. It’s verra fine. Now, we’ll need to get the land surveyed without delay if Fergus is to take the surveying reports to New Bern before the snowfall.

**Roger** [his voice scratchy]: I can...do that.

[All turn to him in stunned silence, except Jamie, who looks up from his food with a small smile on his face.]

**Jamie:**  Good, then. I’ll show ye how. Ye can go in a week.

 

 

She leaves in the fall, just as he is returning to teach. There are faculty congratulations and drinks at a pub, but his mind is ever drifting to where she’s gone. The play is touring, and the winter is long. With each phone call he tries to conjure her scent and finds it harder to summon. It is gone from his sheets and he aches for it to return.

The loss she’d noted clings to him, slowly eating away until he feels hollow. If asked he could not name the loss, what is gone. He tries to write and gnaws on the end of the pen. He hums, a relentless melody plucking on his ribs until his body vibrates with it. He wakes with it and draws notes in the condensation on his bedroom window.

His phone buzzes once or twice a week with her face lighting the screen, her words more carefully constructed without the knowledge of everyday life. They are forced to share mundanity and he is surprised to find it does not comfort him to know that she ran into an old university friend in Chicago, or that she is tired of hotel linens. He wants her in front of him, against him, and nowhere else. Love is not supposed to be selfish like this, he thinks.

She reads the local reviews of the play to him as she goes to new cities. He is soothed by her voice but grows numb to the meaning behind the words. They are favorable, but the words they use don’t seem to have anything to do with the story he wrote. For a while he wrestled in his mind with the critics, held them to the floor, arms pinioned, as he explained to them what his story meant. His wrestling slowly turned to arguing. His arguing turned to perturbation.

And then one day, as the sun fractures through ice crystals on his bedroom window, he wakes with the smell of her in his nostrils. He breathes deep and the melody hums through his throat. His body vibrates with the notes, his skin prickling with her phantom touch. The song grows stronger and his fingers find invisible struts on his chest. The sleep gathered in the creases of his eyes washes over his cheeks in a flood of tears. When dawn breaks through the ice he rises and sets his feet upon the floor wearing a new skin.

She takes the Amtrak from Chicago to Boston, wanting the rhythm of it to lull her and hold her captive for a while before she sees him again. She turns off her phone and tucks it into the bottom of her shoulder bag, and pulls out her notebook and pen, opening to a blank page.

Distance makes the heart stutter. She thought she’d find clarity away from him, a certain sign of what they were or were not. Instead she found a haze. She had been led to believe that love was a certain and boisterous thing. That she would want to shout it from rooftops and her face would glow with it. What then to make of this? Where it feels she’s walking in a dream state. Nothing feels quite real. She thrums with the energy of her work and welcomes the exhaustion of it, but when she leaves the theater, it is as a ghost.

The pen rests on the notepad, a blot of ink growing. By the end of the train ride she has filled ten pages of freeform thoughts and on the final page she sketches his face, tilted down, but eyes looking at her, a stubborn lock of hair falling over his forehead. When she reads what she has written, just as the train is pulling in to the station, she finds the meandering hopes and dreams and worries all converge on one truth. That love is not soaring or proud, but an invisible current carrying two souls downstream. She lifts her feet from the stream bed and lets it carry her away.

There is one text from him when she turns on her phone.

_The Highlander_

_8 pm_

She blushes at the thought of seeing him. Finally feeling his arms enfold her, the brush of his beard against her cheek. A dizzy rush as she imagines burying her face in his neck, tasting his skin.

Just before eight she steps from the Lyft and shoves her hands into her coat pockets, her body shrinking into itself against the brisk wind. She nearly misses the sign as she shoulders her way past people leaving the pub but stops as his image catches her eye. A smile stretches across her face. It’s a simple poster on bright blue paper, just outside the door. His face is outlined in dark, thick lines. She’s perturbed that she wasn’t the one to draw it.

Her heart is bursting for him. As if they’ve been running through a forest and suddenly break through the tree line. All the clawing, doubting, missteps as he fumbled toward a future he couldn’t see, now seem so perfectly clear. This is him.

Inside, she takes a moment to get her bearings. Sidestepping through the crowd, her eyes fix on him under the spotlight of the small stage at the back. He’s adjusting cords and his guitar and moving his water bottle, so it is precisely where he wants it. It takes her a minute to realize he’s wearing a kilt and the flush she felt earlier returns without hesitancy.

When he turns, his eyes find hers as if there were no others in the room. His mouth opens in surprise and his face transforms to something she’s never seen on him before. Something open and raw and breathless. She pushes through the last of the people to the edge of the stage and he hops down, his hands on her face before he’s steadied himself. And then his mouth is upon hers. It is reckless and wild, and she briefly realizes she is experiencing a boisterous moment of love’s proud display. There are whoops from the crowd and he pulls away from her grinning and flushed.

“Ye’re here.” His words carry a hint of surprise and relief.

“You’re going to sing for me?”

He brought his hand to her cheek, his fingers brushing her hair from her face. “I always sing for you.”

He steps back on the stage and pulls his guitar strap over his shoulder, smiling brightly at the crowd, his eyes flicking back to hers.

“Thank ye for joining me tonight. I’ll have some songs to get ye moving in a bit, but I hope ye’ll indulge me for a moment. I’ve written a new song and I’d like to sing it for the woman I love if she wouldna mind it.”

He loses the rest of the crowd and sees only the reflection of her smile, her eyes shining and heavy with tears. The scent of her clings to his skin, and he breathes deep as his fingers flutter over the strings and the melody rises in his throat.

 

[It is night on the ridge. A baby’s cry pierces the dark and Roger comes out of the cabin holding Jem to his shoulder. The moon casts its light on them as he bounces trying to soothe him.]

[Roger clears his throat and begins to sing, his voice rough and raspy.]

**Roger:** In a cavern...by a canyon..excavatin’ for a mine...Dwelt a miner...forty-niner...And his daughter...Clementine.  Oh my darlin...oh my darlin...Clementine. You are lost and gone...forever. Dreadful sorry...Clementine.

[Brianna quietly stands on the porch watching him continue to sing to their son.]

**Roger:** Drove she ducklings...to the water...Ev’ry morning...just at nine…

**Narrator:** This man who has fought and lost and died, rises in the moonlight to soothe his child, to sing with a broken voice and embrace with a battered body and finds he is whole.

[Lights fade. Curtain.]


End file.
